Wau-nan-gee or the Massacre at Chicago Part 16

"They are preparing to attack us, sir," he shouted. "There is not a moment to be lost in making your arrangements."

Scarcely had these words been uttered, when a volley came rattling across the sandhill from the level of the prairie, wounding, but not disabling, two of his men.

"We must charge them," he answered, "it is our only hope. Keep them in check, Wells, while I form line. Now, my lads, it is death or victory for us. Baggage wagons halt, and form hollow square, to shelter the women and children from the bullets of the enemy. Rear subdivision, to the front! Right subdivision, halt!"

"Left subdivision, halt!" ordered Lieutenant Elmsley, when they had come up.

"Front!" pursued the captain, and the line was formed. "Men, throw off your packs--you must have nothing to enc.u.mber you in that sand; the drivers will carry them into the square. Ladies, you had better retire there too."

"To a soldier's wife the field of battle were preferable on a day like this," calmly returned Mrs. Headley, who, with Mrs. Elmsley, had ridden up with the rear. "Better to be shot down there than tomahawked near the wagons. Besides our presence will encourage the men--will it not, my lads?" A loud cheer burst from the ranks.

Each man, certainly, felt greater confidence than before.

"Then forward, charge!" shouted Capt. Headley, availing himself of this moment of enthusiasm; "recollect, you fight for your wives and children; if you drive not the Indians, they peris.h.!.+"

"Nay, forget not, you fight for your colors!" cried Ronayne, galloping furiously through the sand to the front, and heading the centre.

The ascent was not very steep, and as the colors, tightly girt over the shoulders of Ronayne and hanging from the flanks of his horse, first appeared crowning the crest, and then the little serried line of bayonets glittering like so many streams of light in the sun's rays, exclamations of wonder, mingled with fierce shouts, burst from the Indians, who up to this moment had, after their first volley, been wholly occupied by Captain Wells and his party of hors.e.m.e.n, whom they seemed more anxious to make prisoners than to fire at, and this in consideration of their horses, which they were anxious to obtain unwounded.

"Wells," shouted Captain Headley, on whose little line the Indians now began to open their fire, "send half your people to protect my right flank. Charge, men! It is all down hill work now, and we are fairly in for it. If we are to die, let us die like men."

Simultaneously, and without the order, the men shouted the charge as, with their commanding officer and the colors full in view before them, they dashed forward where their enemies were the thickest, and such was the effect of their unswerving courage that the latter, although in numbers sufficient to have annihilated them, were awed by their resolution; and in many instances, those who were not in the immediate line of their advance, stood leaning on their guns watching them and without firing a shot; nor was this strange, for it must be recollected that the hostile feeling to the garrison had not been shared by all the Pottowatomies, especially by the chiefs and more elderly warriors.

Before the determined advance of the gallant little band the Indians gave way, until they had retired again nearly as far as their own encampment, but the ranks were fast thinning by the distant fire of the enemy, whom it was found impossible to reach with the bayonet.

"This will never do," thundered Capt. Headley; "halt! form square!"

The order was speedily obeyed; but on hearing firing behind and looking round for his wife and Mrs. Elmsley, to place them in the centre, Captain Headley saw that a great number of the Indians whom they had driven before them had turned aside and reunited behind--thus cutting them off from their party. It has already been observed that the horse Mrs. Headley rode was a magnificent animal, docile yet full of life and spirit, and the excitement and sound of battle had, on this occasion, given to him an animation--a-grace, if it may be so expressed, which, rendered even more remarkable by the superb figure of his rider, excited in several of the Indians a strong desire to get possession of him uninjured. Her own scalp they were burning with eagerness to secure; for from the first moment of the charge down the hill, she had used her little rifle so successfully that of three Indians. .h.i.t by her two had been killed, and they had evinced their deep exasperation. The anxiety to extricate herself, without the horse being wounded, in all probability saved her; for they fired so high that almost all the bullets pa.s.sed over her head, although not less than seven did reach their aim--one of them lodging in her left arm. The Indians were now pressing more closely upon her, when Captain Wells, seeing the danger to which the n.o.ble woman was exposed, dashed back at the head of his brave hors.e.m.e.n, and used the tomahawk with such effect without the enemy being able to guard themselves against the rapidity of his movements, that he soon cleared a pa.s.sage to her, cleft the skull of a Pottowatomie who had reached her side, and was in the very act of removing her riding hat to scalp her alive, and lifting her off her horse, covered with wounds and faint from loss of blood, bore her rapidly down towards the lake. As he approached it, he met Winnebeg and Black Partridge returning to the scene of blood, to save her if possible, as they had previously saved Mrs. Elmsley, who had had her horse shot under her, and been wounded in the ankle. Both were hurried into a canoe, and concealed under blankets by those good but now powerless chiefs, while the brave but desperate captain returned to head his warriors and try the last issue of the fight.

Meanwhile, Captain Headley had been again attacked and with great fury by the rallying Indians, while the only diversion in his favor was that made by the little band of Miamis, who, however, could not be expected to render efficient aid much longer; besides, whatever immediate advantage might be gained, the final result when the darkness of night should set in, was but too certain. Not only his officers and himself, but his men felt this, and they could scarcely be said to regret it, when, surrounding them from a distance, the Indians renewed a fire which, from the moment of their first being thrown into square, had in a great degree been lulled. During that short interval they had been made to moisten their parched lips from their canteens of water into which had been thrown a small quant.i.ty of rum at starting, and no one who has ever donned the buckler need be told the exhilarating, the renewing influence of this upon men jaded with long previous watching and fighting at disadvantage.

"Men, husband your ammunition," enjoined the captain, "keep cool, and when I give the word, level low and deliberately. Our position cannot be better, for the country is all clear and flat around us.

G.o.d defend the right."

"Commence file-firing from the right of faces," he ordered, as he remarked that the Indians, rendered bolder by has inactivity, were evidently closing upon him, as for the purpose of a rush.

Steadily and coolly the men pulled the trigger for the first time; and the effect of the caution he had given was perceptible. The Indians were no less galled than astonished when turning from one face to get out of the way of danger, they found the bullets coming upon them from every point of the compa.s.s--not very many, it is true, but quite enough to stay and to warn them that a nearer approach was dangerous; and before the little band had discharged a dozen cartridges each--few failing to tell--they had withdrawn entirely out of reach of danger either to themselves or to their enemies.

While thus they stood, as it were, at bay, they for the first time had leisure to look around and observe the havoc that had been done along the slope of the sandhill and on the plain below. Nearly half of their gallant comrades lay there scalped and tomahawked, and with their bodies and limbs thrown into those strange contortions which mark the last physical agony of the soldier struck down by the bullet in the midst of life and health; but for every private lay two Indians at least--a few of them who had been overtaken in the furious charge down the hill, but most of them sufferers from their fire while formed in their little but compact square. Capt.

Headley and his lieutenant looked anxiously, but silently, towards the sand hill, where they had last seen their wives exposed to the most imminent danger, yet gallantly defended by Captain Wells and his Miami warriors, three of whose horses, shot under them, enc.u.mbered the ground, but nothing was to be seen of either; and the bitterness of sorrow was in their hearts, for they believed them to be dead, and that their bodies were lying beyond the crest of the hill, whence occasional shouts were heard. As for Ronayne, he kept his eye fixed in the opposite direction, for they were not far from the encampment of the Pottowatomies, and he felt satisfied that his beloved Maria, who, after the great peril to which he had fears Mrs. Headley and Mrs Elmsley were exposed, he deeply rejoiced to know was in a place of safety, was then not far from him, and no doubt forcibly detained from the field by the mother of Wau-nan-gee, or by the youth himself.

"'Twere folly to remain here longer and thus inactive," remarked Captain Headley. "The Indians are evidently waiting for night to renew their attack, for they are sensible that, as few of them are provided with rifles, our muskets have greatly the advantage of range. Hark! do you hear the yells and shouting of the h.e.l.l-hounds in the fort? It is well for us that nearly half their force has been attracted thither by the thirst of plunder and the hope of obtaining rum. But let us resume our position on the hill. Now that we shall be enabled to command every thing around us, if we are to die let us fall together like men and soldiers in our little serried square."

"Long live our brave captain!--huzza! We will light to the last cartridge, and bayonet in hand," exclaimed Paul Degarmo, raising his cap excitedly.

The cheer was taken up and prolonged until the forest that bounded the places they were in sent back the echo.

Scarcely had this subsided, when terrific shrieks and cries, mingled with fierce yells, burst from the opposite side of the sandhill.

This lasted for about five minutes, and then gradually died away.

Then many straggling shots were heard, and these died away in distance.

Captain Headley, who had deferred his movement towards the sandhill during this manifestation of the presence of the enemy on the other side of the ridge, now moved his men to its base, and there halted them. After a little time, ordering a rush with the bayonet on the first Indians who should show themselves in any force, he stepped out of the square, and moved in a stooping posture to gain the summit, that he might reconnoitre the enemy and see what they were about. But scarcely had he reached the top when he again rapidly descended. His face was pale--his lips compressed. He had seen a sight to shake the nerves of the sternest soldier, and gladly did he swallow, from the canteen of Sergeant Nixon, who offered it to him, the cordial beverage that carried renewed circulation to his veins.

"Forward, men, with as little noise as possible, and gain the crest of the hill; but, whatever you see, let not your nerves be shaken into indiscretion. If you fire without orders from me, you are lost without a hope. Be cool, and when I do give the command to fire, let the front face of the square exchange their discharged firelocks for those of the rear face, in order to be always loaded.

Now, men, be cool."

Captain Headley was wise in issuing this precautionary order, for the sight the little square beheld, on gaining and halting on the ridge, was one not merely to render men reckless and imprudent, but in a great measure to drive them mad.

CHAPTER XXII.

"A crimson river of warm blood like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind."

--_t.i.tus Andronicus._

To understand the horrible scene that met the view, first of the commanding officer, and subsequently of the little square, it will be necessary to go back to certain events of the past half hour.

When Captain Wells had returned from delivering over his wounded niece to the charge of Black Partridge and Winnebeg, both of whom had, with deep sorrow, beheld the fiendish excesses of their young men, but without being able to prevent them, he was pursuing his way across the sandhill to the a.s.sistance of Captain Headley.

Suddenly, while looking around to find out in what part of the field his Miamis were, he saw several Pottowatomies approach the spot where the baggage wagons were drawn up, and commence tomahawking the children. The cries and shrieks of the mothers, as the helpless victims perished one after the other, under their eyes, until nearly a dozen had fallen, brought with it all the renewal of the horror he ever experienced when women and children were the a.s.sailed, and drove him almost frantic.

"Is that your game?" he exclaimed furiously in their own language!--"thank G.o.d, we can play at that too."

The attempt to check the strong party a.s.sembled round the wagons, he felt would be unavailing, but resolving to venture, single-handed, into the encampment of the enemy, where their children had been left unguarded, he turned his horse's head, dashed past the fort again at his fullest speed, and with revenge and a threat of retaliation racking his very heart strings, made for their wigwams.

Alarmed, in turn, for the safety of their squaws and children, the murderers now desisted from their work and followed as vapidly as they could on foot, the flight of the Miami leader. Every now and then they stopped and fired, but at the outset all their shots were in vain, for the captain, accustomed to that sort of warfare, throwing himself along the neck of his horse, loading and firing in that position, baffled all their attempts to bring him down, while he waved his tomahawk on high, as if in triumph at the successful issue of what he meditated. As the pursuing Indians pa.s.sed the gate of the fort, now filled with plunderers, many intoxicated, Pee-to-tum, who had been there from the first--his love of drink being even stronger than his thirst for revenge--came staggering forth, suddenly aroused to a consciousness of what was going on without, and demanded to know the cause of this new and immediate tumult. The young Indians hastily informed him; when the Chippewa, dropping on one knee, and holding his ramrod as a rest upon the ground, ran his right and uninjured eye along the sight, pulled the trigger, and brought down the horse of the fugitive, which fell with a heavy plunge. A tremendous shout followed from the band who had lost, four warriors by his fire, and who, consequently deeply enraged, now made the greatest efforts to come up with and secure him. Before he could disengage himself from his horse, under which he lay severely wounded himself, two other Indians came up from an opposite quarter, and, taking him prisoner, sought to bear him off before the others could reach him. These were the chiefs Waubansee and Winnebeg, the latter of whom, seeing the danger of the captain from the moment when the ma.s.sacre of the children commenced, had left Mrs. Headley and Mrs. Elmsley under the care of Black Partridge, and hastened to be of service to him if possible. But all their efforts to save him were vain. With rapid strides, and shouts rendered more savage than ever by the fumes of the liquor he had swallowed, and with the scalp of the unfortunate Von Voltenberg--who had been killed while returning to the fort for a small flask of brandy which he had forgotten--dangling at his side, Pee-to-tum advanced with furious speed, and, stabbing the captain in the back, put an end to his misery. No sooner had he fallen, than, like a vulture, the Chippewa sprang upon the lifeless body, and, making an incision with his knife upon the strong and full-haired crown, tore the reeking covering away, and thus added another trophy to his disgusting spoils. This was the signal for further outrage, Exasperated by the knowledge of the revenge he had meditated, and the loss he had already occasioned them, the warriors who had first followed the ill-fated Miami leader, cut open the left side with their knives, and tore forth the yet warm and bleeding heart, which, as well as the body itself, they bore back in triumph to the very spot whence they had set out, Pee-to-tum carrying his heart, pierced by the ramrod, as it protruded a couple of feet from the barrel of his rifle.

Squatted in a circle, and within a few feet of the wagon in which the tomahawked children lay covered with blood, and fast stiffening in the coldness of death, now sat about twenty Indians, with Pee-to-tum at their head, pa.s.sing from hand to hand the quivering heart of the slain man, whose eyes, straining, as it were, from their sockets, seemed to watch the horrid repast in which they were indulging, while the blood streamed disgustingly over their chins and lips, and trickled over their persons. So many wolves or tigers could not have torn away more voraciously with their teeth, or smacked their lips with greater delight in the relish of human food, than did these loathsome creatures, who now moistened the nauseous repast from a black bottle of rum which had been found in one of the wagons containing the medicine for the sick--and what gave additional disgust was the hideous aspect of the inflamed eye of the Chippewa, from which the bandage had fallen off, and from which the heat of the sun's rays was fast drawing a briny, ropy, and copious discharge, resembling rather the grey and slimy mucus of the toad than the tears of a human being.

At the moment when the little square thus reappeared unexpectedly before them, the revellers, who had supposed them either in the hollow below, or long since disposed of by their comrades, were almost instantly sobered and on their feet. Quickly they flew to secure their guns, which lay at a little distance behind them; but, before they could reach them, a volley from the front face of the square was poured in with an effect which, at that short distance, could not fail to prove destructive; and of the twenty Indians who had composed the circle, more than a dozen of them fell dead, or so desperately wounded, that they could not crawl off the ground.

"Good, men!" shudderingly remarked Capt. Headley, "we have revenged this slaughter at least. Cease firing. Pull not another trigger until I order you. If there be a hope left for us, it must depend wholly upon our coolness. What a pity you missed that scoundrel Pee-to-tum. Hark, Elmsley, do you hear his brutal voice calling upon the Indians to renew the attack!"--and then in a lower tone to the same officer: "What can have become of our wives? Yonder rides a Pottowatomie mounted on Mrs. Headley's charger. I pray G.o.d they may not have made them prisoners!"

"Heaven grant it may be so, sir!" solemnly returned his subaltern; "but, in their present exasperated state, I fear the worst. Why, while we were in the hollow, I distinctly saw Mrs. Headley bring down two Indians with her rifle. They would not easily forget that."

"And I, sir," said Sergeant Nixon deferentially, as if fearing to intrude, "saw Mrs. Elmsley's horse shot under her; and when an Indian came up and struggled with her, she threw her arm around his neck, and presented and fired a pistol at him, and then tried to get at his scalping knife which was suspended over his chest. What the result was, I could not make out; but the last I saw of her, she was seized by another Indian and carried in his arms across the very spot where we now stand. See, sir, that is her horse!" and he pointed to the animal, which lay only a few feet from the square, and which, among the dead bodies of soldiers, Pottowatomies, and Miamis, had hitherto escaped their attention.

"See, sir, they are collecting in great force near the gate,"

observed the lieutenant--"I can distinctly see Pee-to-tum, who has joined them, motioning with his hand to advance."

"Then is this the best position we could have chosen," returned Captain Headley; "courage, men! A taste of biscuit from your haversacks while you have time, a teaspoonful of rum, and then we must at it again. Mind, above all things, that you keep cool, and do not fire a shot without orders."

From the moment that Ronayne had placed himself, with the colors, at the head of the little party when advancing up the sandhill, he had not spoken a word, but continued to gaze fixedly and abstractedly upon that part of the plain or prairie which led to the inner encampment of the Indians. His whole thought--his undivided attention was given to his wife, whose anxiety, nay, anguish, at hearing the sounds of conflict which denoted his imminent peril, he knew must be intense. True, he himself was spared the anxiety and uncertainty which filled the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his comrades on seeing those they loved best on earth exposed to all the fearful chance of battle, but even in that there was an excitement which in some degree compensated for the risks they ran. The very fact of their presence had sustained them; but now that the final result seemed no longer doubtful, and that the annihilation of the whole party was to be momentarily expected, he felt that one last look, one last embrace of her he loved, would rob death of half its horrors.

But this was but the momentary selfishness of the man. When Mrs.

Headley and Mrs. Elmsley were known to have disappeared, he more than ever rejoiced in the circ.u.mstances which had removed his beloved wife from the horrors of the day, and placed her under so faithful a guardians.h.i.+p as that of the generous Wau-nan-gee.

But there was another reason for the calm, the serious silence which the Virginian had preserved. Independently of the aching interest he took in all that he supposed to be pa.s.sing at that moment in the mind of his absent wife, he had been deeply galled by the last insulting remark of Captain Headley, to which he had, it is true, replied in a similar spirit, yet which nevertheless had continued to give him much annoyance. His duty as bearer of the colors being rather pa.s.sive than active, he had not found it necessary to open his lips, except to utter a few words of encouragement and approval to the men. Formed in hollow square, as the little force now was, there was no opportunity for display of individual or personal prowess, or he certainly would have sought an opportunity to test with his commanding officer the extent of their respective daring. But now an occasion at last presented itself, and in a manner least expected.